“Can You Sell Comic Books In This Economy?”

Media Bistro poses the question and gives a few answers, most of which fall into the “maybe” category.

I do know that a few of my friends, with no disrespect to their local comic book stores, have turned to mail-order subscription services for their floppies to save money. With the prices of floppies ever increasing (some of which are $3.99 per issue now), I do wonder how long the floppy issues have left. I know, I know, plenty of people have sounded the death knell of single-issue comics before, but the price may push plenty of people to stop buying. (I don’t buy single issues too often, mostly out of laziness so I’m probably not a good one to ask.)

I wonder if a sort of Japanese manga-phonebook style model may work for some comics — say for $16, you get 5 comics (like, for example, all of the X-Men titles) all bound together every month. Sure, it may not have the super-pretty Photoshop colors, but you’d still have a cost-effective way to read comics. And maybe, eventually, individual titles/storylines could be collected in pretty color for a premium price. I’d go for that, personally.

But obviously, for a lot of people who are trying to pay bills and keep their jobs, luxury entertainment items like comics will probably fall away. I think comics (and publishing) in general can weather this, but I think we all know there are rough times ahead.